Boethius — Divine Man or Christian Philospopher?

Summary

1. Anitius Manlius Severinus Boethius (475/477–525/526) was a formative thinker of a transition period, for his times were stormy ones. As John Marenbon remarks his birth coincides with the deposition of the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, in 476. Italy, after a period of barbaric incursions which annihilated the Roman Empire had a short time of respite (Pax gothica) under the reign of Theodoric the Great, king of Ostrogoths.

Boethius himself came from aristocratic stock, namely from the ancient family of Anitii. After he had lost his parents, he was brought up by Quintus Memmius Simmachus, a leading member of one of the foremost Roman families of the day. The family tradition and the milieu where Boethius spent his formative years were favorable for his philosophical and literary interests, the general political situation and the position of his family tended naturally to push him into politics, while his Christianity inspired him with interest in theology, so there is no wonder that during his whole life his preoccupations were divided between these three areas. Although Cassiodorus also mentiones that he was a poet.

The philosophical and literary nourishment he received was of the best quality that century of declining Roman culture was able to offer him, as he probably studied in the philosophical school of Alexandria, possibly in others, such as that of Athens.